Last Night on Earth
by Amelia-Williams-Pond
Summary: Peter Manner is pretty sure it's his last night on Earth. What's a man to do? (WARNING- major character death, suicide)
1. T-Minus 2 Days, Part 1

Three weeks from now, his name would be in the papers, but not for anything good. Usually, his name showed up because of some new role he'd landed, or some scandal with some actress. Publicity.

Publicity didn't matter when you were dead. At least, he assumed it didn't.

Peter Manner had stopped caring about publicity the second he made it big. After that, it kept coming right to him.

It didn't mean _shit._

Nothing did, not anymore. That was why his name would be in the papers. Three weeks, probably three days. He didn't know how long he'd last, now that his decision had been made. He just needed to do one thing, first. If he was going to be a coward, he was going to do something damn brave first, like he had when he was a kid, the fearless leader of the Blyton Summer Detective Club.

He thought of them often. Andy, and Mate, and Kerri. Even Sean. But especially Kerri.

Holding in a sigh, he picked up his phone. He was dead set on seeing his demons head on, one last time, and he knew it would end him. Whatever. He was allowed one cowardly act in his life.

Holding the phone in his hand, he knew it was his last chance. His lifeline. Taking a deep breath, he nodded to himself.

Then, he dialed her number and the world held its breath.


	2. T-Minus 2 Days, Part 2

Kerri sounded full of life, the way she had when they were young, before everything went wrong. But she only sounded that way for about two minutes, hanging up on him with a quick promise to call back later.

Peter felt-... He felt. That was part of the problem. Right this second, it was cold, hard dejection pressing out from the center of his skull, seeping into his veins and his heart. It drowned out his will to live, mostly. But he knew there were things he needed to do first.

The Sleepy Lake monster. The Blyton Summer Detective Club's final case.

It was final for a reason. For a moment, Peter allowed himself to remember that case, the island. They had caught Wickley in the old Deboën mansion out on that deserted isle, and... Something was off about that place. He- they had all- seen things that didn't add up.

The deer. Torn practically in _half._ No way in Hell Wickley did that. So what had? Wild animals couldn't- there were no major predators there. He remembered seeing something with gray, mottled skin. It had stopped to look at him, came within a foot of his petrified form, before looking up as if hearing something and racing off. Wickley.

No. Wickley was just what he'd _told_ himself. What he'd seen was something else.

A real monster.

But monsters don't exist. The monster was _never_ real. It was just a guy in a mask, every time, without fail. Unless it was a girl in a mask. But the monsters, creeps, and kooks they'd faced were all fakes. There were no ghost pirates, no werewolves, no demons or centaurs or selkies or anything else. They. Did not. Exist.

That was why Peter was having a hard time rationalizing what he'd seen. It couldn't have been a fake. It was more real than anything he'd ever gone up against- more real, he thought, than his present self. It haunted his dreams. He barely slept anymore. Sometimes, he'd wake up with a supernova in his chest, terror making him leap up from the hellish dreamscape that had overtaken his bed, and think that that was absolutely right. _Hell._ That was where his dreams took him, where that monster (monsters don't exist, they don't- they shouldn't be- they _can't I can't monsters don't exist but it does it does it's real I saw it felt it heard it_ ) came from.

Maybe the witch from the Deboën family lore was real.

Peter scoffed. Eleven years later here he is, speculating about the supernatural genes of a maybe-extinct family. He didn't know if Dunia was still alive.

Maybe he should just get this over with.

He looked down at his hands. They were trembling.

No. He was going to wait until he could think about Sleepy Lake, about the things he'd seen, without this all-consuming fear. He was going to do one last brave thing before his act of ultimate cowardice, and he was going to face this fear that had been feeding off the core of his very being like a parasite. If he didn't, it would kill him.

He laughed out loud to the empty room, but there was no humor in it. After all, it didn't matter if the fear would kill him. It already had.

He stayed up with all the lights on, thinking about Sleepy Lake and the Blyton Summer Detective Club until sheer exhaustion forced his eyes shut.

When he dreamed, he dreamt of the suffocating cold, black water that had surrounded them when the boat tipped.

 **Author's Note- If anybody's reading this, I'm sorry the chapters are so short. I'm switching back and forth between phone and laptop with no internet to make these updates because I have not loved a book as much as I loved Meddling Kids since I was very young, and I need to write as much as I can about it because I have nobody to talk to about it. There doesn't appear to be much demand for fics about this book, but I'm going to try and change that. This story is my first attempt. Let me know how it's going in a review or message. Thanks for reading!**


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